Twitter’s financial health and stock-price prospects have been the subject of much debate around the company’s IPO — but the real value doesn’t become apparent until you look at why users find the service so powerful

Twitter’s initial public offering is a sign that it has graduated from being a startup into a full-fledged media entity — but the pressures of doing that have already changed the service in some important ways

Smith Electric Vehicles was hoping to raise capital through an initial public offering, but called off that plan and will turn to private capital instead. It’s the latest cleantech company that hasn’t been able to go public in 2012.

Instead of focusing on Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie, investors and analysts should pay more attention to what Facebook flagged in its latest securities filing: that its mobile business is underperforming on the ad-revenue front and it doesn’t really know whether it can fix it.

Facebook confirmed on Friday night that it had purchased Glancee, a mobile app that uses your location and Facebook log in to connect you with like-minded individuals in real life. It’s pre-IPO shopping spree in the mobile arena continues.

Demandware who? Yeah, that is exactly what I thought. The $88 million IPO of this e-commerce platform provider has priced at $16-a-share which values the company at $448 million — a sign that Wall Street is ready to punt on even marginal technology IPOs.

Biofuel companies continue to look to the public markets. On Friday, trash-to-fuel company Fulcrum BioEnergy filed for an IPO that could raise up to $115 million. The Pleasanton, Calif.-based company, which has generated no revenues, turns garbage into ethanol using a gasification and purification process.

With technology stars like Facebook, Zynga and Twitter holding off on IPOs, it’s meant even more business for private stock markets like SecondMarket. The trading service said transactions in the fourth quarter hit $157.8 million, more the doubling the $75 million recorded from the third quarter.

Xpert Financial just announced today that it has gotten approval to open an electronic trading platform that will give companies capital and liquidity but without the requirements of going public. This could allow companies to stay private longer and further erode the IPO market.

Skype today filed to raise up to $100 million through an initial public offering. Last week saw Demand Media file for an IPO and NXP, a semiconductor company, actually go public on Thursday. Is the technology IPO back, or is this a false start?

Skype’s $100 million IPO filing could be seen as good news for the nascent video chat market. But despite 40 percent of all calls made through Skype being video chats, a look at its financials reveals that it doesn’t actually make any money from the service.

Skype, the Internet telephony company, is looking to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering, according to an S-1 filing with the SEC. The offering was widely viewed as in the cards, though I admit it came sooner than I thought.

RealD, which licenses the 3-D technology used by a majority of theaters in the U.S., is going public this week. Its IPO, which is the first by a company selling modern 3-D technology, could be a harbinger of the 3-D market as a whole.

Amyris Biotechnologies has taken one more step toward the long sought goal of commercial scale next-gen biofuel production. The IPO hopeful’s latest filing with regulators shows it has collected its first revenue from a multimillion dollar federal grant awarded late last year.

Codexis, a Redwood City, Calif.-based developer of evolved biocatalysts for drug and biofuel production debuted on the Nasdaq this morning at the low end of its proposed price range: just $13 per share for a raise of $78 million.

Molycorp, which mines of a group of metals known as rare earth elements used in hybrid vehicle batteries, wind turbines, compact fluorescent light bulbs and other technologies, filed with regulators Friday afternoon to raise up to $350 million in an IPO.

Calix Networks, a Petaluma, Calif.-based broadband gear maker, sold 6.33 million shares at $13 each to raise $82 million from the public markets. One of the rare telecom IPOs, it could help boost the fortunes of other IPO candidates like Force 10 and Telx.

Force10, the networking company, filed for an IPO today, one of many companies seeking to hit the public markets. Its filing doesn’t reflect the return of the big-ticket technology offering as much as it reflects a chance to exit while it still can.